Welcome

I've been playing on and off for a decade after being introduced by a friend.

I played regularly for a few years during the poker boom and had a decent record at the micros, particularly Rush and Zoom No Limit Hold'em games (here's one of my graphs).

Around 2012 I began a new career which involved immersing myself completely in study in my spare time, so I had little to no time for poker. However recently this burden has eased and so I have been gradually dipping back in.

I'm an amateur player who still hopes to some day beat the rake.

Thursday, 26 April 2012

Zoom is hard.

I'm about 12k hands in now, and my strategy is settling down. I seem to be spewing a little less in a few spots. I'm about break even overall though so no serious damage done.

This limit - much like Rush - seems very nitty. This has up and downsides of course; it means that I can loosen up in late position and make tons of money stealing the blinds but also means that my showdown winnings will suffer. I have no idea if I'll be able to make money at this format, but I'll put in 50-100k hands and see what conclusions I can draw from that sample.

I think that my ability to make a decent win rate will come down to hand reading basically. Being able to fold some rather good hands in big pots once in a while (which I haven't managed yet, other than folding KK preflop). There just doesn't seem to be enough fish ready to pay off and a ton of players playing less than ten % of hands. My non - showdown winnings are not out of line so it will all boil down to how much money I make when we flip the cards over. Folding one pair hands to post flop aggression is easy (unless it's a 4-bet pot and some whale has called me out of position and flopped a boat). It's the times when I have 88 on 984r and get min check raised on a T turn by a nit. I find it hard to let go of sets in that sort of spot (and that's an actual example from my play so far).

In other words to cut out the jargon, I'll need to play very mathematically accurately. I'm happy with my preflop ranges, it's the post flop pots that will separate me from the rest.

Once I've played 50k hands I'll put the graph up along with some detailed statistics.

For now if you're curious about these things, I'm playing 15/12 with 3.5% 3-bet which are pretty standard TAG stats for full ring.

GL

PS Did you ever river a straight and shove believing it to be the nuts and then realise the board is paired and get snapped off by a boat? Just me? Yeah thought so, sigh. Been playing so well the last 6/7 thousand hands too. Time to take a break, perhaps my concentration was off. To be fair the way the hand played I think there were some weaker hands that would call, but it was definitely a bad value bet.